Finmeccanica is considering whether to take less than the full 10% option it holds with Airbus Industrie for participating in the A3XX program and is working with Boeing to assess the implications of a longer term offer to take a 5% stake in the new Airbus Integrated Co.
India's Ministry of Civil Aviation is studying a plan that would expand passenger capacity at Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport. The project would involve expansion of the international terminal as well as domestic facilities. From April 1999-March 2000, the airport handled 8.3 million passengers, 55% of which was domestic traffic, and 45% international. Under the expansion, the international terminal's capacity would increase to 6.6 million passengers annually.
Peter P. McDermott, 2nd, (see photo) has become executive vice president/ chief financial officer of the Cirrus Design Corp., Duluth, Minn. He was senior vice president-finance of Blandin Paper.
Litton Guidance and Control Systems will integrate Rockwell Collins' airborne selective availability antispoofing module receiver into Litton's LN-25X embedded GPS/inertial navigation system.
A Pentagon senior review board cleared the U.S. Air Force/Lockheed Martin Theater Battle Management Core System for training and implementation, with full certification scheduled for the middle of this month. The automated command, control and intelligence tool features an integrated architecture designed to facilitate joint air campaign operations. Used in the last two Joint Expeditionary Force Experiments, the system cut up to 12 hr. off the Air Tasking Order planning cycle.
Smiths Industries is continuing its acquisition spree with the purchase of Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Fairchild Defense division for $100 million in an all-cash deal. The U.S. business unit, with sales of $76 million in 1999, manufactures data recording and analysis systems for military aircraft. Since January, Smiths has invested $378 million in aerospace acquisitions, including Invensys Aerospace Div. and BAE Systems' Marconi Actuation Systems, and is poised to merge with the TI Group (AW&ST Sept. 25, p. 40).
The Sea Launch organization is working to increase the payload capability of the system to 6,000 kg. (13,228 lb.) by the end of 2002. The baseline maximum geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) payload weight capability for the system was 5,000 kg., but that has been increased to 5,250 kg. for the launch of the Thuraya spacecraft.
Rich Leonard has been promoted to managing director for revenue forecast and analysis and Laura McKee to managing director of investor relations from director of corporate real estate and airport affairs for Trans World Airlines. Ron McNeill has been named vice president- revenue management.
Several aircraft platforms are positioning themselves to become the Pentagon's future support jamming system as the Defense Dept. moves forward with its assessment of how best to replace the aging EA-6B Prowlers. The triservice study is seven months into its $16-million, 22-month process that is supposed to deliver, by December 2001, a recommendation on how the Pentagon should invest its money to maintain its electronic attack capability well into the future.
Boeing's Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle demonstrator is on target for a first flight early next year following a public presentation of the first of two planned aircraft on Sept. 27 at the company's St. Louis facilities.
Henry J. Pernicka, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at San Jose (Calif.) State University, has been awarded the first American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Foundation Professorship. He was selected for his proposal, ``Outreach to K-12 and Community College Students Using Project Spartnik.''
Air France, which on Oct. 29 is scheduled to increase its overall passenger capacity by 6.7%, expects to further expand in the North Atlantic market by adding more flights between Paris and Atlanta. Next winter, the French flag carrier will serve 101 points in the U.S., most of them under code-share agreements with Continental Airlines and Delta Air Lines. Air France officials also confirmed a plan to inaugurate late this month an early morning Paris-New York service, scheduled to land at JFK at 10:50 a.m., which should attract former Concorde passengers.
USMC Gen. (Ret.) John R. Dailey, director of the Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum in Washington, has been appointed to North Carolina's First Flight Centennial Commission. He also is chairman of the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission.
A coalition of engineering groups and professional societies is pushing to reverse the slide in federal spending on aeronautics and other aviation-related research and technology (see p. 82). They include the usual trade groups plus societies representing mechanical, electrical, civil and aeronautical engineers--more than 1 million members in all. They feel they have to fight on a number of fronts, from explaining the basics and showing how aviation relates to the economy to working in Congress to try to change arcane details of how the budget is put together.
The Air Force Warfighter Training Research Div., a part of the Air Force Research Laboratory in Mesa, Ariz., is developing technologies for the service's Distributed Mission Training (DMT) initiative. One of the project's goals is to bring live reconnaissance imagery into simulator cockpits at low cost, and use it to update simulator databases. Under a cooperative research and development agreement, the division and SGI Federal will make the DMT testbed able to acquire and process real-time space imagery for cockpit display.
3rdTech Inc. (www.3rdTech.com) has developed a high-performance wide-area tracker and 3D laser scanner based on technology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Computer Science Dept. The HiBall-3000 six-degree-of-freedom tracker system has a 6-oz. billiard ball-sized head with 6 photodiodes (see photo) that view an array of infrared LED beacons in the ceiling. The beacons can cover areas more than 40 X 40 ft. Position and angle are updated 2,000 times per second with a lag of under one millisec., and a resolution of 0.2 mm.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has delivered Japan's first F-2 to the Air Self-Defense Forces. The F-2 is to replace F-1 fighter aircraft at the ASDF's Misawa base, with 20 units expected to be delivered there by the end of March 2001. The F-2 was prohibited from flying from the Mitsubishi plant to the base because local government officials at Misawa had last-minute noise and safety concerns. Mitsubishi leads the joint Japan-U.S. F-2 development program, with Lockheed Martin, Kawasaki and Fuji as major subcontractors.
Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer has secured the first firm order for the newest addition to its ERJ-145 family. American Eagle ordered more than 66 44-seat ERJ-140s, converting 66 ERJ-135 options and an unspecified number of firm orders for the smaller type. The order was announced at the European Regions Airline Assn.'s (ERA) general assembly in Interlaken, Switzerland.
L-3 Communications has received a contract worth up to $2.5 million from the USAF to supply Model FA2100 flight data recorders to be installed in the C-130 fleet.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the European Commission (EC) have approved Boeing's $3.75-billion purchase of Hughes Space and Communications from Hughes Electronics Corp., with the addition of provisions aimed at eliminating unfair competitive advantages. The deal--which will expand Boeing's current Space and Communications Group to a $10-billion, 43,000-employee organization, based primarily in Southern California--is expected to be closed on Oct. 6.
The FAA certified the New Piper Aircraft's Malibu Meridian on Sept. 27. Powered by a 500-shp. Pratt&Whitney Canada PT6A-42A turboprop engine, the PA46-500TP is priced at $1.5 million and cruises at more than 300 mph. Piper has orders for 135 Meridians. Plans call for producing 35 airplanes this year and more than 100 in 2001.
The Army's plan to speed its procurement of AAI's Shadow-200 unmanned aerial vehicle is drawing criticism. ``The Army has a questionable basis for revising its acquisition strategy to procure four additional Shadow-200 systems in February 2001 before operational testing is conducted,'' warns the General Accounting Office. The RQ-7A Shadow-200, with three aircraft per system, is supposed to meet the Army's long-unfulfilled requirement for a tactical UAV system. The Army wants to buy the system faster and sees minimal risk in accelerating the program.
Raytheon and the U.S. Navy have received approval from the Pentagon to begin low-rate initial production of the AIM-9X air-to-air missile. The decision sets the stage for Raytheon to receive $43 million for 143 missiles, including 76 for the Navy and 67 for the U.S. Air Force. The weapons are to be delivered in 2002 and become operational first on the F-15C and F/A-18C/D. The AIM-9X features high-off-boresight targeting capability. The Pentagon plans to buy about 10,000 of the missiles during an 18-year production program.
